US university student medically evacuated from North Korea in a coma as Dennis Rodman arrives

Otto Warmbier. Kyodo/Reuters Otto Warmbier, an American serving a 15-year prison term with hard labor for alleged anti-state acts in North Korea has been medically evacuated while in a coma to Sapporo, Japan, according to The Washington Post.

Warmbier has been in a coma for over a year, since shortly after his last public appearance in court.

"Our son is coming home," Warmbier's father told The Post on Tuesday. "At the moment, we're just treating this like he's been in an accident. We get to see our son Otto tonight."

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement that the State Department secured Warmbier's release at the direction of President Donald Trump. Tillerson said the department continued to discuss three other detained Americans with North Korea. Warmbier is due back at his home in Cincinnati on Tuesday evening, according to The Post.

Warmbier is a University of Virginia student from suburban Cincinnati. He was sentenced in March 2016, after a televised tearful public confession, for trying to steal a propaganda banner.

The announcement comes as former NBA player Dennis Rodman is paying a return visit to North Korea. Rodman, who has palled around with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, flew to Pyongyang on Tuesday on a trip he says he hopes will "open a door" for his former "Celebrity Apprentice" boss, Trump.

Rodman, one of the few people to know both leaders of the nuclear-armed nations, sported a black T-shirt advertising a cybercurrency used to buy and sell marijuana as he talked to reporters briefly before boarding his flight from Beijing to the North Korean capital.

Rodman's arrival in Pyongyang was relatively low-key, and his schedule remained a mystery.

He was met by North Korean Vice Minister of Sports Son Kwang Ho. Officials said he was to stay until Saturday. He breezed through customs and immigration at Pyongyang's airport before being whisked away to his hotel.

"I'm just here to see some friends and have a good time," he said.

Former NBA player Dennis Rodman arrives to check in for his flight to North Korea, at Beijing's international airport, on June 13. AFP/Wang Zhao

Rodman received the red-carpet treatment on his four past trips since 2013, which generated a lot of publicity — most of it not good — and did little in terms of diplomacy. On this trip, he has already been roundly criticized by some for visiting during a time of high tensions between the US and North Korea over its weapons programs and recent missile launches.

"Well, I'm pretty sure he's pretty much happy with the fact that I'm over here trying to accomplish something that we both need," Rodman said in Beijing when asked if Trump was aware of the trip.

Rodman said the issue of several Americans currently detained by North Korea is "not my purpose right now."

In Tokyo, a visiting senior US official said Rodman was making the trip as a private citizen.

"We are aware of his visit. We wish him well, but we have issued travel warnings to Americans and suggested they not travel to North Korea for their own safety," US Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon told reporters after discussing the North Korean missile threat and other issues with Japanese counterparts.

In 2014, Rodman arranged a basketball game with other former NBA players and North Koreans and regaled Kim with a rendition of "Happy Birthday." On the same trip, he suggested an American missionary was at fault for his own imprisonment in North Korea, remarks for which he later apologized.

Any visit to North Korea by a high-profile American is a political minefield.

Rodman has been criticized for failing to use his influence on leaders who are otherwise isolated diplomatically from the rest of the world. He has generally brushed off such criticism as unfair because as an athlete and celebrity he shouldn't be expected to solve difficult political problems.

Americans are regarded as enemies in North Korea because the two countries never signed a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War. Thousands of US troops are based in South Korea, and the Demilitarized Zone between the North and South is one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world.

Courtesy of Vice

A statement issued in New York by a Rodman publicist said the former NBA player was in the rare position of being friends with the leaders of both North Korea and the United States. Rodman was a cast member on two seasons of Trump's TV reality show "Celebrity Apprentice."

Rodman tweeted that his trip was being sponsored by Potcoin, one of an increasing number of cybercurrencies used to buy and sell marijuana in state-regulated markets.

There is an internet urban legend that North Korea is a pothead paradise and maybe even the next Amsterdam of pot tourism. But the claim that marijuana is legal in North Korea is not true — it's considered a controlled substance in the same category as cocaine and heroin.

Americans have been sentenced to years in North Korean prisons for such seemingly minor offenses as stealing a political banner and most likely could not expect leniency if the country's drug laws were violated.